Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Burn.
You’d think, given the one-way relationships I’ve cut out of my life this year and the freedom that was hard-won in my divorce, that I’d have more time, but I don’t. I can barely find time to write a single chapter of my new novel. I’ve cut out TV completely and a dozen mindless activities that I no longer find relaxing, let alone stimulating.
I’m just as busy as I’ve ever been. The difference is, I’m no longer saying, “I’m too busy” when an invitation comes. I answer the call to adventure instead of asking for a raincheck.
These days, I’m intent on nurturing my relationships and exploring new frontiers—my own. How far can I go out onto the edge of life and see the glory on the horizon and douse myself with feelings before setting myself on fire with longforgotten if ever known passions?
It would have been so easy to say, no, I’m too busy to have a deep, hours-long discussion on the psychological versus physical needs of alpha females, the paradox of male sexual submission, and the underlying cause of female promiscuity in Betas vs Alphas.
It would have been so easy to say, no, I’m too busy to drive an hour-and-a-half to a tiny farm where I’d watch from inches away as three separate entities—a Civil War soldier, a wind elemental, and a Cherokee medicine man named Crazy Wolf—took turns inhabiting a man’s body and talking to us. And as I bent close to hear their words, I wore the cloak of the Morrigan and never once flinched with fear that one of the
possessors might grab my throat and squeeze. Though thinking of it now makes me nervous.
It would have been so easy to say, no, I’m too busy to have a Gathering on a work night, but one of my guests immediately, with only a little help from me, plunged into a two-hour past life regression and explored 1804 South Carolina with me and his poignant love affair in that time and place (not with me). It was amazing—time travel at its finest!
It would have been so easy to say, no, I’m too busy to drive to meet a friend in Defuniak Springs on a work night, get liquored up on margaritas for the first time in years, and traipse the serene fields of the Glendale Nature Preserve, stare over the creek bridge at the green waters and alligator swirls near the bank, and examine beautifully rustic pine boxes waiting to be bought and used as coffins. Little did I know the tranquility of the pinpricks of thousands of plainly seen Summer stars would be shared with a swarm of fireflies, an evening breeze, and a half dozen graves in the “eco-cemetery.”
It would have been so easy to say, no, I’m too busy to do anything artistic right now, but when the suggestion came today from The Treat that we might collaborate on a few songs together and I might stir the poet and songwriter inside me once again, I jumped at the opportunity.
It’s just another chance to experiment with life and adventure and see how far I can step out on the edge and if…if I should jump, will I fly? Because no matter how small the physical world becomes and how few oceans and wildernesses are left to conquer and claim, it’s my own frontiers that are wide open and waiting to be explored.
Alone or with someone else, it’s just as exciting.
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